(Continued from Page 1) "So anyway, all that said, when I met Phil, he kind of broke the mold. He’s a very unusual person. We had a brief meeting in this hotel in L.A. and he just said one thing to me, which was that my character was depressed and that he imagined that he spent a lot of time when he was visiting his home in this particular story. doing weird things like pressing his cheeks up to cold walls. And you know how when you’re depressed, you do kind of strange things like that to distract yourself from the misery? You just kind of find yourself roaming around and kind pressing your cheek up to cold surfaces, you know what I mean? There is just something about him saying that that just seemed so specific and so real and kind of unusual and surprising, that I thought that he just must have something. There must be something about this guy and that’s worth experimenting on."
In this particular case I felt like the role was a really interesting part, but it was full of ambiguity as to how it was going to be played. He’s just kind of a looming presence throughout the film who distances himself from the family in a lot of ways. And the question of how to convey what he’s going through, being back in the place that is very much part of him but that he feels uncomfortable in, was a tricky point. And so I felt like that this director really seemed to have some ideas about it.
So, you know, having said everything that I’ve said about not generally choosing films based on directors, this guy, there was something about him that I felt was different than anything that I’ve worked with before. And it proved true. I mean, this movie is a director’s movie in a lot of ways.”
Why do you think your character feels so disconnected from his family?
“I think that he’s someone who… This gets into these issues of, the big questions about cultural differences between the North and the South and cosmopolitan areas and more rural areas. And I think that he was somebody who felt marooned in a rural setting. He felt that somehow his family’s experience in the world was too small for him. I think he wanted to make something of himself in the world and be a presence in the world in a way that he didn’t feel he could be, being in a small town and growing up in the environment that he’d been living in up through his teenage years.
I think the film doesn’t really judge him either way for it, or the family for being… I don’t think the film comments on any of those decisions. I don’t think it suggests the family are hicks and small-minded nor does it suggest that he is pretentious for wanting to move to Chicago and marry an art dealer. It just allows all those decisions to exist without judgment, which is I think one of the best things about the movie.”
What could you relate to about this character?
I think just the feeling of visiting family is, especially with somebody who you’ve married that is from a very different kind of background and whatnot, is almost universal. I mean for anybody who’s moved to a part of the world that’s very different from where you’re from or whatever, and then going back and spending time there. And for anybody bringing a spouse back to one’s family for the first time, there are kind of sentiments that I felt are very familiar. Do you know what I mean? In terms of just not quite knowing how to integrate everyone together and kind of checking out and wanting to just sleep. And so that kind of situation that my character finds himself in is something I understood.
And more than that, I don’t feel ever that I had to share the experience with a character that I play in order to play them. I mean, I would say most of my most successful performances have been in roles that have completely different from my experience. I mean half my career I’ve spent playing people from England, for one thing.”
Everybody thinks you are from England.
(Laughing) “I know…”
You’re too convincing.
“Well thank you. And that’s one of the pleasures of being an actor, is kind of getting out of yourself and trying to stretch and reshape yourself into someone else that’s had a very different kind of experience. Obviously you bring whatever you know about life and about the way that people behave and everything to a performance.”
PAGE 3: Alessandro Nivola on "Junebug" and His Charaacter
